Not everybody wants to build big muscles...I get that.

And if you're reading this, that means you want to get strong without building extra mass.

There are absolutely ways to do this...all you need to do is adjust your training and nutrition to that specific goal and your physiqe and performance will reflect that.

For nutrition, you want to be eating around maintenance calorie levels. Not eating over and above that will keep you from increasing muscle size substantially while still giving you enough energy to train hard and develop strength.

For training, you want to do something like this.

Essentially, you're focusing on building the STRUCTURE of the muscle (myofibrillar hypertrophy).

The other primary type of growth is called sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, which primarily increases the volume of "soup" inside the muscle fiber, resulting in a bigger overall fiber. Training where you "chase the pump" is probably the best known way of achieving this.

Now granted, any type of training you do will develop both aspects to some extent...the key is focusing primarily on the desired type of hypertrophy with your training.

With this style of training, you focus on the functional type of hypertrophy...the kind that builds the freakish strength where you are a LOT stronger than you look, and far more explosive than what you can achieve with pump-style training.

Don't get me wrong...I love pump training, too :)... but if your goal is pound-for-pound strength, this is the type of training you need to be doing.

Nick Nilsson
The Mad Scientist of Muscle

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